I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day
In later work, Ukeles extended her practice to encompass maintenance tasks outside of the home, in art institutions, and the public sphere more broadly.
This performative work was exhibited as 720 Polaroid photos covering an entire wall. The photographs capture 300 maintenance workers (maids, security guards, and repairmen) at work inside a skyscraper at 55 Water Street in New York's Financial District. Ukeles spent five weeks in the building photographing the workers and asking them to classify what they were doing at that moment as work of art. She asked each worker to devote an hour of every shift to making Maintenance Art (which, by all outward appearances was identical to their customary work) and to wear a pin announcing their participation in her project. In this way, she was offering them some authorship of their own lives and actions, as well as "The Duchampian freedom to rename something, to switch something". Like earlier work, I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day makes visible otherwise hidden and essential labor, which is otherwise rarely respected as important work done by diligent workers.
